Ian McEwan “Atonement” Part 2, Appunti di Letteratura Inglese

Scarica Ian McEwan “Atonement” Part 2 e più Appunti in PDF di Letteratura Inglese solo su Docsity! “Atonement” Part 2 ● The tone of the narrator changes dramatically ● Part 1 is divided into chapters, part 2 is not ● Single narrative in 3rd person narration ● Most of the time, he adopts Robbie's pov ● We are now 5 years later, in the battle field, where we are following 3 soldiers on their way to Dunkirk evacuating England ● The border between Germany and Belgium is very fragmented ● The 3 soldiers: we don't understand who they are for the first pages ○ At one point we understand that one of them is Robbie!! What has happened to him? ● There has been a trial and he has been considered guilty and sentenced to jail ● When the war broke out, all prisoners were allowed to decide whether to remain in prison or gain freedom in the front fighting against the Germans ● He's making his best to reach Dunkirk as soon as possible ● His 2 companions are called Mace and Nettle, who are 2 corporals, whereas he's a simple soldier ○ But here, Robbie becomes the leader regardless of his lower rank/status ● Here, there is not a clear gap between reality and imagination, and often these 2 dimensions overlap and we don't clearly understand where one ends and the other begins ● Nightmarish atmosphere [Paul Crostwaithe conducted a research on the soldiers who fought in the war by reading their diaries: they were ordinary people, not experienced. In their diaries they often describe reality as a nightmare. ] ● His 2 companions make fun of him calling him "Guvernor" in order to preserve their dignity since he was lower in rank ● Robbie's hand is trembling ● Robbie's life is split in 2: ○ During the day, he lives in reality ○ At night, he lives in a dream, dreaming of Cecilia and about all the letters they sent to each other, so he gets lost in his imagination, which is crucial for him in order to be motivated to continue his journey ■ This gave him a purpose ● This dramatic situation, however, was better than staying inside a prison cell because at least he was free ● What has happened to Cecilia? ● She has decided to cut off from her family (her parents, her brother and her sister too): she moved away and she was sent to Cambridge to study medicine, but since she's so crossed with her parents she decided to become a nurse instead, which seems to be an indirect punishment to her family ● Their relationship goes on through correspondence since they could not see each other ● The narrator tells us they did have a chance to meet each other again, but they are used to write to each other by imagining the other, without meeting ● "Robbie and Cecilia had been making love for years - by post" this tells us how dramatic the situation actually is. ● She tells him she's going to get married and they're going to go live together, so this gives Robbie even more motivation to keep fighting ● Cecilia become his strongest motivation to fight depression, he keeps reading her letters at night and knows some lines by heart ● She decided to cut loose from her family because they all believed an hysterical little girl. Robbie would like for her to re-establish her relationship with her family ○ But when Cecilia is nervous, she becomes stubborn: she could either support Robbie or stay w her family, so she chose him. ○ She's angry because she thinks that the police did not make enough enquiry about the rape, but that's because the family did not want to, and that's what makes her so angry ○ Briony = silly, hysterical little girl ● One recurrent thing she writes in her letters is "I'll wait for you. Come back", which is the same imperative she used w her sister when she had nightmares in order to make her come back to reality ● Another letter from Cecilia: ○ Briony's parents decided she had to attend the university of Cambridge, but she eventually decided not to go and to follow Cecilia's example instead ■ Cecilia as her role model (she plays a motherly role for Briony) ○ She makes fun of Briony as a nurse ○ Briony = a fantasist, someone who gets lost in her own fantasies but others pay the price of this ■ That's why Cecilia hates her little sister now and doesn't miss any opportunity to make fun of and criticize her ○ She's trying to give an explanation on why she decided to become a nurse too, she doesn't say anything about her motherly role ○ She feels that her sister is doing so as a sort of Atonement, to pay for her mistake, she wants to be of use to other people. ● We now get to understand what Robbie thinks of Briony and about what she did to him: ○ Back to an episode between Robbie and Briony, when B fell into the river and R saved her, during her swimming lessons ■ She tells him "I love you" ○ McEwan was interested in psychology and in the theories of Freud: ■ Number 3 is recurrent: 3 episodes where the water element is present ■ Fountain scene: Cecilia gets undressed to "punish" Robbie ■ Robbie's bath: he's thinking about Cecilia in a sexual way ■ Swimming lessons in the river: Briony and Robbie ■ Water elements: what do we think when we think about water?